A workforce snapshot: opinion piece

Podiatry has always had an image issue. Even back in 1979 when I enrolled at the Chelsea School of Chiropody in London, my family, friends and strangers were all puzzled by my choice of career path.

However, student enrolments were high and recruitment to podiatry programs was not a major concern for institutions. Sadly, what we have witnessed in Australia since 2015 is a steady decline in podiatry student enrolments. This is a broader issue affecting New Zealand, the UK and US but my focus in this piece is on the Australian problem.

Podiatry programs have come under increasing scrutiny from the university executive as small courses are loss-makers for an institution and podiatry is an expensive clinical course. Podiatry programs can become locked into a downward spiral as a university invests in courses which recruit well such as occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and speech pathology. A few non-podiatry champions do stand with podiatry academics and advocate but our profession is small in comparison to physiotherapy and occupational therapy, and we lack political power. The community may complain loudly about a prospective course closure but we need a far stronger and powerful collective voice to ensure state and federal governments understand the true cost of reducing the podiatry graduate pipeline, decimating podiatry services and ultimately compromising the future of the podiatry profession.

This collective voice has been absent or at best, poorly coordinated. All stakeholders need to accept the challenge to reverse the trend and increase podiatry student enrolments.

University course teams must engage with community and industry partners to design podiatry programs which are accessible to prospective students at different life stages, with diverse needs. If we are to succeed in increasing podiatry student enrolments, we cannot expect people with family and work commitments to re-locate to another part of the country for study or rely on the finite pool of high school students who typically consider feet to be gross!

University marketing teams focus on selling the ‘brand’ and it’s left to the small teams of podiatry academic and clinical staff to promote our programs. But it’s no use leaving it up to high school students to select the ‘podiatry’ session when they have no knowledge of what a podiatrist does, or the career pathways available to them. Educating school careers advisors and teachers about podiatry is worthwhile effort but this can be undone easily if a student’s family or friends convince them to choose another pathway.

All podiatrists have the opportunity each day to challenge those who perpetuate the stereotype of podiatry as ‘foot care’. Practitioners also have a responsibility to maintain professional development and work to full scope of practice. If a simple footcare service is all that some podiatrists are content to provide, it’s no wonder that some doctors, nurses, other allied health professionals and clients continue to hold outdated beliefs and share misinformation about podiatry practice.

The Australian Podiatry Association (APodA) as the national peak body for podiatry has a major responsibility for advocacy and marketing the profession. A past reliance on marketing resources which exacerbated the image problem, rather than challenging community perceptions of podiatry, did not assist universities to promote podiatry as an exciting and rewarding career pathway.

Since 2022, collaboration of the APodA with the Australasian Council of Podiatry Deans (ACPD) has generated energy for a renewed focus on the podiatry ‘brand’. However, much greater investment is required to understand the needs of prospective students and promote podiatry as an aspirational career. We need to create a cultural change across the profession to restore pride in the full potential of our discipline. If we lose focus on sustaining and growing the number of podiatrists in Australia, we will witness an increasing erosion of our practice by other disciplines such as physiotherapists, clinical exercise physiologists, occupational therapists and nurses.

As a podiatry educator, I am immensely proud of all our graduates who enter the workforce with capabilities and knowledge which might challenge podiatry practitioners who have years of experience. We must all take responsibility for nurturing these new members of our profession, to learn from and with them and provide them with opportunities for working to full scope of practice.

These novice practitioners are not a threat, they are our future and we need more of them.